Kindness: Authentic Living Exercises to Live Boldly in Alignment to Yourself
Respect • Ownership • Connection • Kindness
By Lee Havenga | August 14, 2025
Authentic living exercises guide value-driven acts of Kindness, helping you shape a life aligned with your truest self. When your Kindness, a ROCK thru principle, reflects your values, you’re not just helping others—you’re living your beliefs.
A few ways to align a core value to Kindness actions that fuel your sense of self:
- Community: Organize a Saturday park cleanup—care for your neighborhood and connect with others.
- Personal growth: Volunteer to coach a youth team—learn alongside the kids you guide.
- Health: Cook nourishing meals for a friend recovering from surgery—show care that aligns with your values.
Investing your time, energy, and resources to meet someone else’s needs strengthens your connection to yourself, proving that you are living according to what truly matters.
APPLY IT: INTENTIONAL PROSOCIAL SPENDING
Use your resources—whether time, energy, or money—to benefit someone in need, framed consciously in alignment with your values. Here’s how:
1. Identify a need
Go back to your Values Compass worksheet (More details in the 6.26 email) and identify one of your high-ranking values that currently feels underrepresented in your life. Then, choose someone or a cause in need that ties to that value.
2. Give generously and intentionally
Offer your most precious resources—time, energy, attention, or money—in a way that says, “This is me fully living this value.” For example, if “family relationships” and “leisure” are high for you, gift a shared experience like a weekend trip instead of material items.
3. Notice the internal alignment
Right after giving, tune in to your physical and emotional state. That grounded, contented feeling is you acting in harmony with your true self.
DEEPEN THE IMPACT
Make it a recurring commitment: Instead of a one-off act, turn your value-aligned giving into a habit. For instance, schedule quarterly volunteering days, set a monthly budget for experience-based gifts, or block time each week for mentoring. This builds a reliable bridge between your values and your daily life.
MORE RESOURCES
Book: Happy Money: The New Science of Smarter Spending — explores how prosocial spending deepens meaning.
Article: Spending Money on Others Can Buy Happiness — short and science-backed exploration of giving’s joyful returns.
Video: Notebook — a touching short film about how a boy shows Kindness to his mom based on what matters most to him.
Technique Science Source
Dunn, Elizabeth W., Lara B. Aknin, and Michael I. Norton. “Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness.” Science, vol. 319, no. 5870, 21 Mar. 2008, pp. 1687–1688.
Kim, Garam, et al. “Prosocial Spending Encourages Happiness: A Replication of the Only Experiment Reported in Dunn, Aknin, and Norton (2008).” PLOS ONE, vol. 17, no. 9, 7 Sept. 2022, e0272434.
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